Marvin

y2an said:

‘Holographic’ here might refer to the glass having an embedded hologram of a mirror which with the right geometry provides high levels of reflection for a rear projected off-axis display, something which can’t be done with half-silvered glass. Although I’ve only seen this monochromatically, I would guess the technology has advanced to colour. 

The description here says they use small projectors in the legs that point into the waveguide lenses:

https://mashable.com/article/meta-ar-glasses-reveal

The videos below describe the technology, they mention they are working with some of the big companies like Meta:





The main issue with these is image quality because it's semi-transparent. It would be good if they could put a blocking lens on the outer layer like some kind of OLED or e-ink display that physically blocks light behind the virtual content so that it doesn't need to be so bright to counter the light coming into the lens. When it projects a movie, it can block just the rectangle behind the movie but leave the rest of the view clear.

Fully opaque content is the main advantage of VR and passthrough AR. That was one of Apple's marketing lines for Vision Pro - it seamlessy blends the real world and the digital world. If this technology can get fully opaque then it would be a good way to go but semi-transparent is no good, it's too hard to read text, too distracting, no good for movies or photos, no good for immersion (no immersive environments).

m4m40 said:

I’d expect new movies to be shot in a format that’s compatible with 8k or better. iPhone.. really ??? 

While movie cameras are still way better for filming big budget movies, the iPhone 15 is a big step up in quality over the original 28 Days Later. That footage was terrible:



Canon XL-1 is 480p, standard definition.

iPhone 15 Pro Max can produce some very nice looking results with ProRes Log format:





Here there's a comparison to an expensive movie camera, 5:30:



The softer footage of the expensive camera can come from the lenses used, that's just a bare iPhone. The iPhone has a big advantage with stabilization as it has an accelerometer. It's much lighter for holding when filming close shots like right in an actor's face without bumping into the actor. The iPhone can also film stereo/spatial video, can be attached to a drone for aerial shots and is water resistant.

Apple's own TV shows and movies use Arri Alexa cameras:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13287846/technical/
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0804484/technical/

There's no question expensive movie cameras offer better overall image quality, bigger sensors, better resolution, colors, light levels but footage from modern iPhones rivals lower-end film cameras. All that matters is the final result.

siretman said:

Any guesses on the 15” MacBook Air being updated to M4 in an October event?

15" M4 Air is unlikely given the M3 Air was released in March this year. This would mean just 7 months between major updates. Two updates in the same year has happened before but I expect they'd push that update until early 2025.

I think M4 Pro/Max Macbook Pros for October and M4 mini with redesign. Then Air in January-March 2025.

The Studio/Pro are a bit of an unknown. They are due an update but they usually do the Ultra chips later so they could get a January-June 2025 release. M4 iMac in 2025 too.

pulseimages said:

Any idea how many units have been sold?

There's some information from the wearables revenue:

https://s2.q4cdn.com/470004039/files/doc_earnings/2024/q3/filing/_10-Q-Q3-2024-As-Filed.pdf

Wearables, home and accessories in 9 months ending June 29th 2024 = $27.9b. The same period the year before was $30.5b. The Apple Watch makes up around half the total. iPhone/iPad accessories (AirPods, cases, chargers, keyboards) make a significant amount, mainly AirPods, which are estimated to be close to half the amount too. AirPods + Watch are easily 80-90% of the total wearables category, possibly more.

1m Vision Pro units would be over $3.5b. Given that the total fell nearly $3b, it's not likely Apple Vision Pro made over $1b, < 300k sales in 9 months.

Not too surprising considering it had a US-only launch initially and the fact that $500 VR headsets like Meta Quest only sell 5-10m units per year.

A sub-$2000 headset would sell millions of units.

battlescarred1 said:
Why do they let so many of their products die a slow death? HomePod discontinued, then a meager update years later. HomeKit and the Home app. So much potential, yet so little effort put into it. FCP went dormant for years. I don't want to make an entire list of the items that they half a$$, it's depressing.